Boyfriend guilty of second-degree murder

A Riverside jury Wednesday found Adam Michael Starkey guilty of second-degree murder in the Jan. 24, 2012, slaying of his girlfriend, Jennifer Bowers, in the travel trailer they lived in off Bundy Canyon Road in Menifee.

Starkey, 32, is scheduled to be sentenced at 8:30 a.m. May 1 in Riverside Superior Court.

The six-man, six-woman jury returned the verdict after a little more than three hours of deliberations. Jurors found Starkey not guilty of first-degree murder. But they found him guilty of murder in the second degree, intentionally discharging a firearm in the commission of the crime and unlawful possession of a firearm.

Starkey stared straight ahead and sat motionless as the verdicts were read.

Jurors declined to comment afterward.

Deputy District Attorney Natalie Pitre said it was likely the result of Starkey's drunkenness. He was reported to have a blood-alcohol content of 0.23 percent well more than four hours after the shooting.

"Because he was extremely intoxicated, they probably decided that he didn't formulate the intent to kill," Pitre said.

As the first verdict was read, there was a hush over the audience that included 14 friends and family members of Bowers, who was 38 at the time of her death. Then a collective sigh of relief followed as the second-degree murder verdict was read, and a man was ushered out of the courtroom after pumping his fist.

"I was more nervous than anything," said Janie Bowers of Menifee, the victim's 22-year-old daughter. "It was just nerve-wracking. But I'm not surprised that it was second-degree."

She said she was glad to see that her mother's killer will be punished.

"I'm glad it's over," Bowers said. "I'm excited. I'm happy that he is going to be serving what he took away from my mom."

Starkey is likely to spend the rest of his life, or most of it, behind bars.

"He will have plenty of time to think about what he did," said Patrick Martinez of Norwalk, the fiance of a close friend of Jennifer Bowers.

Jennifer Bowers was found dead of a single gunshot wound to the left side of her head, lying on a couch in a pool of blood. Starkey phoned 911 to report the shooting.

Citing Starkey's decision to wait about 20 minutes for authorities to arrive and not flee, Deputy Public Defender Michael Micallef maintained that his client had not intended to kill Bowers and that the shooting was an accident. Micallef said the weapon, a Colt .38-caliber revolver more than a century old, was prone to malfunction and evidence indicated it may have misfired.

The defense attorney said Starkey was so drunk that he didn't remember certain aspects of that fateful evening.

Pitre argued in her closing statement that Starkey did not in fact suffer from an "alcoholic blackout," given that he seemed to remember just about everything but the shooting.

She disputed Micallef's suggestion the death was an accident, noting that the weapon was found lying on a sink counter in the travel trailer. Pitre maintained there was no way the gun could have gone off while lying there, or while Starkey was fiddling with it, given the downward trajectory of the bullet as it traveled through Bowers' head.

"I didn't believe that was an issue -- ever," Pitre said, shaking her head, in a brief interview after the verdict. "It's not magic. It (the bullet) doesn't make curves in the air."

Pitre said the evidence showed that Starkey loaded the gun after unloading spent shells, pointed it at Bowers' head and fired.